Norma Skow Smayda ’55 is pictured here with Fuller Stanton Blunt ’55, her date to the Homecoming dance. Smayda graduated from Bucknell with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, but her second career took her from science into the arts and crafts. While living in Norway with her first husband in the late 1960s, Smayda saw a flyer for a local weaving school. She became fascinated with the craft and learned all she could while in Norway. Smayda returned to the United States and pursued an MFA in visual design at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. In 1974, she established the Saunderstown Weaving School in Rhode Island, where she teaches beginning and advanced weavers. In 1982 she married Andrew Staley, who helped her develop the school into the unique place it has become.

Though weaving requires no knowledge of biochemistry, Smayda feels that her Bucknell education proved to be beneficial. “Certainly my years at Bucknell taught me how to pursue what I wanted, not to give up when challenges became too much and to feel comfortable with math, so necessary in designing weaving projects,” Smayda says. Her creative talents, shared with her roommate, Patricia Tinney Fisher ’55, foretold her future. She recalls how they knitted socks for their boyfriends and even small embroidered pictures, two of which still hang in her bedroom.

Smayda’s creative work has come a long way since those days of knitting argyle socks in her Bucknell dormitory. Her fiber art is featured in many books and articles, including her own books Weaving Designs by Bertha Gray Hayes: Miniature Overshot Patterns and Ondulé Textiles: Weaving Contours with a Fan Reed. Her work hangs in the University of Rhode Island’s costume collection, among other places. She has had solo exhibits, is the recipient of many weaving awards and is an active member of the Handweavers Guild of America. Weaving is popular in Scandinavia — as a skill passed down through the generations. But, she says, the American community of weavers is strong, even though the skill is usually learned in classes rather than around the hearth fire.

Smayda teaches weavers of all skill levels at her school, which she says is challenging but inspiring. The school has steadily grown in popularity and is now internationally known, she says.

Smayda intends to keep weaving and teaching as long as possible, saying, “I won’t retire for another decade. I love weaving and the wonderful weavers I meet.”